At China-Kazakh border: New Silk Roads in action — Pepe Escobar

Central Asia, between China and Europe, is bustling

Take the tour with Pepe.

Asia Times
At China-Kazakh border: New Silk Roads in action
Pepe Escobar

Western intellectuals freak over ‘Frankenstein’ China — Pepe Escobar

BRI and the New Silk Roads (land and maritime).

The Vineyard of the Saker
Western intellectuals freak over ‘Frankenstein’ China
Pepe Escobar

Matthew Ehret — The Polar Silk Road Comes to Life as a New Epoch in History Begins

Speaking at China’s second Belt and Road conference in Beijing featuring 37 heads of state, Russia President Vladimir Putin unveiled the intention to unite Russia’s Northern Sea Route with China’s Maritime Silk Road. This announcement should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the close strategic friendship between both countries since the 2015 announcement of an alliance between the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union and Belt and Road Initiative. This extension of the Maritime Silk Road represents a powerful force to transform the last unexplored frontier on the Earth, converting the Arctic from a geopolitical zone of conflict towards a new paradigm of mutual cooperation and development....

Strategic Culture Foundation
The Polar Silk Road Comes to Life as a New Epoch in History Begins

Matthew Ehret

Pepe Escobar — The Eagle, the Bear and the Dragon

The eagle has conveniently forgotten that the original, Ancient Silk Road linked the dragon with the Roman empire for centuries – with no interlopers outside of Eurasia, muses Pepe Escobar.

Consortium News
PEPE ESCOBAR: The Eagle, the Bear and the Dragon

Pepe Escobar — We’re all actors in the New Silk Road play

The BRI forum’s key takeaway was Beijing’s ability to execute a masterful geopolitical Sun Tzu maneuver – realizing that for the scheme to proceed more smoothly it would have to address key questions about debt sustainability, anti-corruption, consultative processes, plus emphasize “bottom-up” negotiations.

Scores of nations across the Global South, as well as some aspiring to developed world status, have adopted the Chinese investment and development model over financing from Washington or Brussels for three very simple reasons: no strings attached, no one-size-fits-all straitjacket, and no interference in their internal affairs....

The West freaking out because it is actually going to compete rather than extract rents?

The Chinese system works like this. The top of the pyramid issues a guideline, or a plan, and then the subsequent layers of the pyramid come up with their own implementation strategies, tweaking the process non-stop. It’s always a variant of Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping’s famous dictum “crossing the river while feeling the stones.”...

Asia Times
We’re all actors in the New Silk Road play

Pepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar — Get over it: Asia rules

The greatest merit of Parag Khanna’s new book, The Future is Asian, is to accessibly tell the story of a historical inevitability – with the extra bonus of an Asian point of view. This is not only a very good public service, it also blows out of the water countless tomes by Western “experts” pontificating about Asia from an air-con cubicle in Washington....

Good backgrounder.

Asia Times
Get over it: Asia rules

Pepe Escobar

See also

The American Conservative
Beltway Warriors Target China as the Next Global ThreatLeon Hadar

Pepe Escobar — Greater Eurasia coming together in the Russian Far East

The Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok has become a crucial part of strategic integration between China, Russia and other countries in northeast Asia, a graduation assimilation set to transform the current world system…

Contrary to misinformed or manipulated Western hysteria, the current Vostok war games in the Russian Far East’s Trans-Baikal, including 3,000 Chinese troops, are just a section of the much deeper, complex Russia-China strategic partnership. This is all about a matryoshka: the war game is a doll inside the geoeconomic game.

In ‘China and Russia: The New Rapprochement’, Alexander Lukin, from the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, lays down the roadmap in detail; the evolving, Eurasia-wide economic partnership is part of a much larger, comprehensive concept of “Greater Eurasia”. This is the core of the Russia-China entente, leading to what political scientist Sergey Karaganov has dubbed, “a common space for economic, logistic and information cooperation, peace and security from Shanghai to Lisbon and from New Delhi to Murmansk.”

Without understanding the Big Picture enveloping debates such as the annual gathering in Vladivostok, it’s impossible to understand how the progressive integration of BRI, EAEU, SCO, ASEAN, BRICS and BRICS Plus is bound to irreversibly change the current world-system.

Asia Times

Greater Eurasia coming together in the Russian Far East

Pepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar — Why Europe is afraid of the New Silk Roads

The BRI, for Beijing, is all about geopolitical but most of all geo-economic projection – including the promotion of new global standards and norms that may not be exactly those practiced by the EU. And that brings us to the heart of the matter, not enounced by the leaked internal report; the intersection between BRI and Made in China: 2025.

Beijing is aiming to become a global high-tech leader in less than seven years. Made in China: 2025 identified 10 sectors – including AI, robotics, aerospace, green cars and shipping and shipbuilding – as priorities.

Leapfrogging.

Western global preeminence is threatened economically.

As Bauer CEO Thomas Bauer told Reuters: “(Rivalry with China) will not be a contest against copiers. It will be one against innovative engineers.”

The obvious problem that Western countries face against China is the difference in population. There are going to be a lot more highly qualified Chinese engineers.

Asia Times
Why Europe is afraid of the New Silk Roads

Pepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar — China’s ‘New Silk Roads’ reach Latin America

Beijing is turbo-charging its infrastructure connectivity across the region and the Caribbean.

"Who lost Latin America?"

Asia Times
China’s ‘New Silk Roads’ reach Latin America
Pepe Escobar

See also

Talk of four nation-led ‘alternative’ to Belt and Road picks up steam

Asia Times Staff

See also

Australia, the United States, India and Japan are talking about establishing a joint regional infrastructure scheme as an alternative to China’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative in an attempt to counter Beijing’s spreading influence, the Australian Financial Review reported on Monday, citing a senior US official.

The Asian Age
India, US, Japan, Aus form ‘quad’ to compete with China’s BRI: report

Reuters

Bruno Maçães — Eurasia, the supercontinent that will define our century

World Economic Forum | Agenda
Eurasia, the supercontinent that will define our century
Bruno Maçães | Senior Advisor, Flint Global

Emanuele Scimia — French president questions China’s New Silk Road strategy

The West starting to wake and realize that the shoe is on the other foot?

In the Chinese view of time and history, the 500 year dominance of the West is only a blip on the screen and the 200 year history of Western liberalism is just a flash.

Asia Times
French president questions China’s New Silk Road strategy
Emanuele Scimia

Pepe Escobar — From the Caucasus to the Balkans, China’s Silk Roads are rising

 With its focus on Central Asia and Eastern Europe, the Belt and Road Initiative can be seen as fulfilling a strategy of challenging the West that can be traced back to Mao….

In the midst of this frenzy of connectivity, it’s easy to overlook a significant historical point: that it was all anticipated by Mao Zedong.

Scholar Chen Gang has stressed how most BRI-participating nations are not as developed, economically, as China. And they are “not just limited to the Eurasian continent, but will eventually cover all the ‘middle zone’ and ‘third world’ put forward by Mao in his ‘Three Worlds Theory.’”

Flashback to 1974. That’s when Mao described the world as being divided between superpowers (the US and USSR); intermediate powers (Japan, Europe, Canada); and exploited nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia, which Mao praised as constituting the forces against First World hegemony. Mao placed China in the third world – as Deng Xiaoping told the UN.

What’s fascinating is how Chen Gang interprets BRI not only as a sequel to China’s historical ties with the Third World, but also as opening a “new era of China’s Third World strategy.” He correctly states that US and EU elites worry that BRI will bring about “the erosion of their global influence and overseas interests.”

Chen Gang’s analysis touches on what, by now, is obvious: “The international game around BRI has just begun.” And it goes almost without saying that Beijing’s BRI-driven foreign policy strategy, by turbo-charging China’s cooperation with the ‘Global South,’ is leaving the US, at best, marginalized.

Of course, the Atlanticists are not going to just sit by and watch this happen to them.

It's game on.

Asia Times
From the Caucasus to the Balkans, China’s Silk Roads are rising
Pepe Escobar

Asif Aziz — A Pound of Flesh: Why is India Trying to Sabotage the Silk Road Initiative?

29 countries attended, including delegates from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations; even the US. However India, the OBOR Initiative’s second-largest investor, boycotted the event.

His absence was a mum protest against People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping’s shrewd decision to deepen ties with Pakistani President Nawaz Sharif on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC); a vital trade route into the Middle East for the OBOR.

More geopolitics and geostrategy around the New Silk Road initiative (OBOR — One Belt One Road).

Astute News
A Pound of Flesh: Why is India Trying to Sabotage the Silk Road Initiative?

Asif Aziz

Laying speed bumps on the New Silk Road aka OBOR

While the US troops on the borders of Russia and Iran are generally considered intimidation/provocation tactics aimed at Moscow and Tehran, the broader reality is that America intends to use its troops as speed-bumps in China's New Silk Road.

The Duran
US troops in Europe and the Middle East are there to provoke China more than Russia or Iran

Adam Garrie

See also

Counterpunch
The New Silk Road Will Go Through Syria
Pepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar — Fear and Loathing on the Afghan Silk Road

It is a categorical imperative for Beijing to expand BRI [Belt and Road Initiative] across the Levant, linking China to the Mediterranean overland just like the Ancient Silk Road did. And yet that clashes frontally with the crucial fact admitted on record by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn himself: that the Obama administration made a “willful decision” to let Islamic State fester, with the objective of arriving at a “Sunnistan” across “Syraq” as a means to accelerate regime change in Damascus. Translation: let ISIS break up the BRI in the Levant.

Counterpunch
Fear and Loathing on the Afghan Silk Road

Pepe Escobar

Ken Moak — Western critics should not be so skeptical of Belt and Road

Western critics continue to pour cold water on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an ambitious and well-planned architecture connecting the massive Eurasian landmass through a system of roads, railways and ports. They complain that it lacks transparency, erodes trade standards set up by the West, is financially too huge for China to handle, is self-serving, and is a deceptive vehicle for China to dominate the world, just to name a few.

The reality is that the West has to destroy this initiative or face watching its dominance fake into oblivion. This could involve war if that is the last resort of a dying empire. This is obvious to anyone with a passing interest in geopolitics, geostrategy and history.

The window for the West to preserve its domination is closing. These are parlous times.

Asia Times
Western critics should not be so skeptical of Belt and Road

Ken Moak

Asia Unhedged — EU snubs Beijing, won’t support Belt and Road statement

Diplomat says OBOR can only be successful if it’s based on “transparency and co-ownership”

Asia Times
EU snubs Beijing, won’t support Belt and Road statement

Asia Unhedged

also

In an interview with Chinese state-run People’s Daily last week, the vice-governor of the People’s Bank of China, Yi Gang, said Belt and Road suffered from structural financing problems and needed support from international lenders. His boss, PBOC governor Zhou Xiaochuan, has voiced the same concern, saying governments alone could not fund all the potential Silk Road projects...

Apparently clueless about MMT.

Many EU countries are concerned that the rhetoric of “win-win cooperation” enshrined in the Silk Road initiative actually hides China’s will to assert itself globally.

Projection?

Don’t expect EU money to fund China’s new Silk Roads

Emanuele Scimia

Pepe Escobar — Xi’s wild geese chase the Silk Road gold

President Xi Jinping invokes Ming dynasty heroes, geopolitical development strategies and wild Asian geese analogies to establish China’s New Silk Roads initiative as the flagship of a trade-focussed new world order

Asia Times

Xi’s wild geese chase the Silk Road gold

Pepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar — New Silk Road

Beijing hopes its top-level two-day Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, starting this Sunday, will be a game-changer for globalization

Asia Times

China widens its Silk Road to the world

Pepe Escobar

Inclusive globalization, win-win global trade, Made in China 2025, the Chinese Dream... President Xi uses the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation to explain how this sprawling trade initiative will change China and the world

Peace, harmony and happiness, plus a deluge of RMB
Pepe Escobar

Brenda Goh And Yawen Chen — China pledges US$124 billion for new Silk Road, says open to everyoneB

Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged US$124 billion on Sunday for his ambitious new Silk Road plan, saying everyone was welcome to join what he envisioned would be a path for peace and prosperity for the world.

China has touted what it formally calls the Belt and Road initiative as a new way to boost development since Xi unveiled the plan in 2013, aiming to expand links between Asia, Africa, Europe and beyond underpinned by billions of dollars in infrastructure investment.…

Inclusivity, harmony, and win-win. What's not to like?

Some Western diplomats have expressed unease about both the summit and the plan as a whole, seeing it as an attempt to promote Chinese influence globally.

"The West" doesn't like anything it does not control.

China has rejected criticism of the plan and the summit, saying the scheme is open to all, is a win-win and aimed only at promoting prosperity.

“What we hope to create is a big family of harmonious co-existence,” Xi said, adding pursuit of the initiative will not resort to outdated geopolitical manoeuvring.

“What we hope to achieve is a new model of win-win cooperation.”...

Asia Times
China pledges US$124 billion for new Silk Road, says open to everyoneB

Brenda Goh And Yawen Chen